


The Fifth Ocular Castigation

by CollisionTheory



Category: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Gen, I'd tag the Ritual Master in this but he only speaks seven words in this tiny tiny story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 06:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20962025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CollisionTheory/pseuds/CollisionTheory
Summary: The peeper beetle's perspective on the removal of SkekTek's eye.





	The Fifth Ocular Castigation

A sudden upwards jerk disturbed the beetle’s troubled rest in its crystal chamber. Suddenly it had the sensation of its cage being moved, though it couldn’t see where. The cage walls were frosted with a maze of scratches, a relic of the beetle’s endless attempts to free itself and find moisture.

  
Was today the day? Its thin eyelids peeled back in anticipation as it rocketed about its space, ready for the moment the cage was opened, the instant there was some kind of opening.

The cage stopped moving, and the beetle paused for a moment, tapping its spindly, spiky limbs where it rested.

Suddenly it heard some sort of muffled chanting, a call-and-repeat, as the cage began moving steadily forward again. If the beetle had had any sort of working memory worth speaking of, it would have thought this moment familiar…reminiscent of something that had happened many, many trine before…

It could just make out many dark shapes looming around it, framed by many small sources of light blossoming about the room. The chanting devolved into shrieks of excitement and hoarse cries into the beyond as something metallic rattled about. The beetle was excited too now. It started chittering madly, throwing itself about the cage in a frenzy.

The cage slammed into a socket and its motion ceased. There was a puff of sweet, cool air. It was time!

The beetle felt only what beings on higher branches of the evolutionary ladder would call inexplicable delight as it launched itself downwards, landing on some blue, scaly surface formed into minute hills and crags and crevasses. It was just warm enough to be pleasing. Trailing currents of breath from the laughter of many living beings blew past the beetle’s sensory organs, giving focus to the creature’s mad quest for food as it scurried down the wailing, deliciously alive one beneath it.

“It will all…be over…soon…” intoned one of the large creatures off to the side. Its voice was dark and soothing.

A wick of moisture upon the air.

A flash of some shining surface.

The beetle spun around upon the blue creature’s shaking face, its own orange eyes boring into the milky and moist one before it. Perfect. It moved into position, easily maintaining balance with the tiny hooks on its limbs despite the creature’s shuddering.

The beautiful, gleaming eye disappeared. Something was blocking the peeper beetle’s long-awaited meal! This could not happen. Undeterred, the beetle grabbed onto the creature’s eyelids and pried them open with a surprising, savage strength. The thin, weak flesh of this being could not seriously stop it. Especially not now, after so long.

The shrill cries of the creature sent pleasant vibrations down the peeper beetle’s limbs. A meal had finally come. It dove into its quarry, pincered jaws and grinding teeth tearing past the firm tension of the eyeball’s surface, breaking into the succulent, aqueous jelly within and ravaging the glimmering gold of the creature’s iris.

Enraptured by its moist and gelatinous meal, the beetle paid no attention to the writhing creature below it, feasting on and on as SkekTek screamed and screamed, moaning and gasping with pain until he could do so no longer. The world turned dark.


End file.
